Section 14. Submit CD Track Names to the Gracenote Database


14. Submit CD Track Names to the Gracenote Database

Before You Begin

See Also

Import a Music CD into iTunes

Examine and Modify Song Information Tags


The reason Apple uses the Gracenote database to provide track names for inserted CDs is that it's the largest public database of track names available. It's the largest because it gets information from the millions of people using software like iTunes every day. Apple could have chosen to provide its own internal music database, with professionally entered informationas Microsoft did in the past for its own CD-playing softwarebut the inevitable result would have been that its information would have been much more limited. Apple chose to go with Gracenote's much greater coverage of all the thousands, if not millions, of CD albums available in the world, because the risk of occasional erroneous information was a small price to pay for the much vaster field of information that is available.

Note

The same philosophy is present in Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org), the online collaborative encyclopedia whose contents are edited daily by everyone who happens to want to add anything. The risk of abuse is more than mitigated by the wealth of accurate and useful information that users provide and the general tendency of people to provide more correct information than bad.


As an iTunes user importing the music from your CD collection for the first time, you can do your part to make sure that the Gracenote database has the most accurate information possible. If you notice errors in the track name data it provides, simply make the necessary corrections and submit the changes back to Gracenote before you import each CD.

To submit CD track information, you have to start with a physical commercial CD, not just a collection of tracks in your Library.

Submit CD Track Names to the Gracenote Database


Insert an Audio CD

Select an audio CD that you want to add to your iTunes Library. Insert it into the computer's CD drive and close the drive door. Wait for iTunes to populate the CD's track listing; if you don't have an Internet connection, the tracks are given generic names, such as Track 01, Track 02, and so on.

Make Necessary Edits to Track Names

Using the info window or the displayed fields in the song listing pane, enter the proper names for the tracks on the CD. The best approach is to select all the songs on the disc, choose File, Get Info (or right-click the song and choose Get Info from the context menu), and make all the changes at once to as many fields as possible. Make sure that the CD's title is correct; if it's part of a multiple-disc set, fill in the Disc Number fields rather than putting an identifier such as [1/3] in the title. If you can, fill in the Composer, Genre, and Year fields, too. (Year should reflect the original release date of the album so that the music on the disc can be accurately pegged to a certain era in musical history.) Click OK when you're done; all the fields are updated to reflect your changes.

Connect to the Internet

If you're not connected to the Internet already, connect now. Dial up your modem or connect to the wireless or wired network, depending on your circumstances.

Submit CD Track Names

Choose Advanced, Submit CD Track Names. iTunes connects to the Gracenote site, checks the available categories, and submits your information. The information submitted uses the CD's track lengths as a key to find the correct database entry; it uses your edited track names as the information to submit. If an entry for your CD is already in the database, your new information will supersede it.

That's all there is to it. The Gracenote staff checks your submission for accuracy and adds it to the database usually within a day or two. Don't expect feedback or a thank-you from Gracenotebut from now on, anyone trying to import the same CD whose information you just submitted will get your more accurate information instead of what was available before.




iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap
iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0672328992
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 150
Authors: Brian Tiemann

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